Portal 2 - Broken Anew
by Veleriphon
Summary: She remembered the incinerator pit, and being dragged from the parking lot of Aperture Labs. Between then and now, it looks like an age has passed. Running on emergency power, the facility teeters on the verge of collapse. : Somewhat A/U, as Chell isn't just a "go for broke" free spirit this time. How will she make things right? How CAN she make things right?
1. Chapter 1

There was a noise. A voice that stuttered, and there was the distinct sound of electricity arcing where it was not supposed to. As her eyelids drew open, a feeling of numbness set into her bones. _W- what is this? _she wondered.

_Where am I?_ The room was filthy; ceiling tiles lay on the ground and a random ray of light illuminated the tortured, former hotel room. _Painting... Heh, "Art," _she recalled the computer's spiel on the subject, but now only the frame haphazardly hung on the wall with barely a scrap of the work hanging from it.

Chell tested her fingers first. _They still work, I guess._ Next, she wiggled her sock-covered toes.

It dawned on her that everything smelled dirty, worn, and generally disused and unkempt. _How long was I really out this time?_

Her despair only grew when a new voice called out, "Excuse me?"

Chell did not move from the bed; it seemed to be cradling her body nicely. Although, that feeling of familiarity could have just been the numbness still clinging on. She exhaled through her little nose, pushing dust from her upper lip; resulting in an involuntary _cough._

The voice tried again, significantly interested in _any _response from her, "My God, you're awake! That's _fantastic_! Look, I can't open the door. Would you come over and open it, please?"

She rolled her blue eyes, remembering all of the _normally_ automated functions that Aperture Laboratories had EVERYWHERE. Floors, walls, ceilings, turrets, tubes... Chell shut her blue eyes and inhaled deeply. The parts of the structure she had utilized versus what she had seen were in great disparity. She sniffled, then wiped her face with her left hand. _Dust everywhere. Where's a si-_

"I don't mean to be rude, well, maybe a bit, but talking through a door isn't as glamorous as it might sound." Whoever this guy was, his tone was starting to rake her nerves the wrong way.

_I couldn't talk the last time I was awake. I doubt that's changed in... however long I was laying here. _Chell tried to move her shoulders, but was rewarded with the pain of slight atrophy. _Looks like I'll be in training again. Great. _She pushed through the physical response this time, managing to maneuver her body up, then over, the edge of the bed, right onto the rotten carpeted, hard floor with a dull _thud_.

After a moment, she lifted her right hand into the air, mockingly punching the floor. _Welp, let's get moving, kiddo. You still got _SOME_ fight left in you. Right?_

"Are you alright in there? I can't actually get in to lend you a hand, _not that I have a hand, mind you._ The door here is still closed." The voice never saw Chell waving her right fist in annoyance, and possibly even defiance. Not that anyone did, for that matter. She did hit the floor twice in response, though.

"Um, so, two for 'yes' and one for 'no'?"

_Thud._

"Right, my bad. One for 'yes', two for 'no'."

_Thud._ With that, she twisted her torso, and pulled her knees toward her chest in an effort to collect herself. After a wobbly try, she managed to put her sock-clad feet between herself and the shredded remains of the carpeted floor. She was promptly rewarded with a fit of _coughs_. The air was still stale, even with the damage to the ceiling opposite the end of the room that contained the door.

When she finally touched the door handle to open the bloody thing, a tiny _screech _from each hinge tried to warn Chell to stand back. Of course, she failed to recognize the warning, and the lightweight door toppled onto her, knocking her onto the floor.

"Um, hello?" An electrical motor _whirred_ as Wheatly rolled into the room along the track, "Are you okay in here?" His form appeared to drift into the room, not to mention, his camera completely overlooking the door concealing Chell beneath it.

_Thud, thud._ That made Wheatly look down in curiosity, but he _shrieked_ and zipped out in terror.

Chell pushed the door off of herself and sat up. _My feet are cold. I could swear I had some boots here somewhere._ Finding a box in the closet solved her problem, and she slipped on her high tech footwear from the safety of the worn out bed. _So..._ she started to really examine her surroundings: the refrigerator was dead, but thankfully empty, and much more than just the ceiling was damaged, more like an entire corner of the suite. She could see perhaps a few miles across the facility, and down into its depths there was a faint shimmering of water. Looking up at the facility's ceiling far, far above, she could see patches of blue sky amongst shimmering cones of sunlight.

It was beautiful, and a smile began to work itself across her soft lips, _But..._ _I caused this to happen. I killed GLaDOS. She ran this place. Kept it going. Without her..._ Chell's smile died in that moment.


	2. Compassion and Depth

Chell's heartbreak failed to abate back there with Wheatley, staring out into the facility's dilapidated carcass.

Wheatly's management rail ended abruptly with his connecting wheels grinding to a halt at an opening dropping into an empty pit of part of a former test chamber. Chell easily hopped down, and turned to the Core. Noticing his predicament, she pointed the Portal Gun at him, hitting the button to initiate its grabbing function.

He felt fear and surprise, recalling, "They told me if I disconnected from this rail, I would die!"

The incredulous look on the human's face did the trick. He looked to and fro, finally deciding, "Okay. I'll do it on a count of three. One- two..." He bucked and tried to back away, but his wheels locked him in place, "Argh! Alright! Alright!"

Wheatly determinedly gazed at Chell this time, "On one! ...ONE!"

For the briefest of moments, Chell envisioned punting him into orbit. She caught him instead, making sure he was staring down the business end of the Portal Gun. She was amused as GLaDOS' voice rang in her head, _Do not look into the operational end of the device._

"Thanks. So... there should be a control port around here somewhere..." On cue, a panel in a nearby wall halfway folded up, and a_n __Aperture Laboratories' Core Control Socket_ raised into place. "Ah, yes. That's it. Now, if you'll just plug me in, I can get an exit ready."

She plugged him into the port, but before he would start, he had another request, "Um, this is awkward, but... would you mind turning around? I, uh- -can't do this when anyone's watching me."

Chell turned around, imagining a gruesome end for him and possibly herself, had the Portal Gun been a firearm instead. She wasn't sure just how many more pathetic, pointless stories she could take.

The wall shifted at the far corner from the pair, and she collected the Core to continue to explore Aperture Laboratories' remains.

After an eternity crawling through potato-ridden offices and some broken down test chambers, they found the central network hub of Aperture Laboratories... and a very dead GLaDOS.

Orange jumpsuit sleeves having been tied around her waist, revealing a well-fitted, but thick, sleeveless _Aperture Labs _tank top, Chell nearly dropped the most expensive tool ever created by the whole of humanity as she plodded to the formerly malevolent, self-aware computer, and slowly broke down in tears.

"Y- you _know _her?!" Wheatley's incredulous statement went unanswered. "Look," he said, attempting to sound motivating, "we have to keep moving. If she wakes up and finds us here..."

Chell only heard part of the A.I. Core's thought, but that was more than enough to bring her out of the stupor. _If she wakes up... _Her hands trailed over GLaDOS' central core for a moment; the feeling of cool, enameled aluminum returned her action.

She grabbed the gun and Wheatly, and down into the bowels of the Central Hub they went. Only a few completely autonomous systems were functioning: production of weighted cubes and turrets, and the suction powered delivery tube network. Only a few lights were even on.

For the second time that day, Wheatley was right, "Only the emergency power is still functioning." For a while, he rambled on about boring nonsense that made Chell wish she could tell him what she really thought about his annoying story. Her ideas ranged from lunatic rages with fire to telling him, 'Shut up, Wheatley.' The smirk and gaze were enough to stop his rant about a former boss he'd had who had hired an exact duplicate of himself for a position down here in the depths, "Um, oh. I- uh... I'll jus- just be quiet while you think your way through this."

The only living human known to exist within all of Aperture Laboratories nearly skipped a small room with a blatant _Core_ _Control Socket, _but Wheatly piped up, "Hey! That looks important. We should check that out."

The space was small and cramped, until Chell looked up into a dizzying tower of circuit breakers. Even the ones by her boot-clad feet were marked with no less than _4,500 Amp / 1.21 MW_.

_Wow,_ she thought.

Eager to get the facility back into some semblance of sane operation, she ignored Wheatley's voice and plugged him into the socket. Almost immediately, the platform holding Chell and the Socket lifted, flipping any deactivated circuit breakers to their _ON_ positions.

Bright light from several angles momentarily blinded Chell as an old version of Aperture's simulated voice stated, "F-facility offline. Systems efficiency at four point t-t-two percent. Central Core offline. Beginning d-d-d-diagnostics."

Wheatley sighed, "Right. See? I'm looking for Evacuation Protocols. Specifically the part about Evacuation."

"C-c-command registers as: Res-s-s-start Central Core. I-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-is this corr-rr-rrect?"

"No! No, no, no, no, no, NO!"

"Command confirmed. R-r-r-restarting Central Core."

Every artificial light in the area died while the Central Core hummed, gathering power in its capacitance systems. Lights flickered across its outer ring and Wheatly panicked, "We're dead. Dang it! There's got to be a way to stop it!"

Numerous electrical actuators jerked GLaDOS' robotic arm this way and that, before the entire contraption lifted her form from the mossy floor.

"HERE IT IS! HERE IT IS!" he frantically stated. "Force Manual Central Core Shutdown, immediately! Code: One, one, one... A."

"Error. Code not accepted. Please try again. Note: you have three attempts remaining."

Sparks, jolting, and _buzzes _emanated from GLaDOS herself.

"One, one, one, ...B!"

"Error. Code not accepted. Congratulations! Central Core restart initiated. Initializing primary network connections."

"NOOOO!"

GLaDOS and her arm flexed as one with the terribly realistic sound of someone taking a very deep breath. She looked down at Wheatly, and of course, spied a telltale ORANGE jumpsuit tied around the waist of her most intrepid test subject _ever_, "Oh, it's YOU. It's been a looong time. How have you been? I've been busy being DEAD ever since you _murdered_ me."

Chell gathered her soft lower lip with her teeth and actually dropped the Portal Gun. Tears of elation and a bit of fear threatened to leave the human woman's eyes, as she gazed upon the Artificial Intelligence's fully functioning, yellow-glowing camera optic.

Wheatly could have paled, had he had skin installed, as he looked at Chell, "THAT was YOU!? My... my GOD!"

Chell opened her mouth, hoping she could make something work. With a few strained breaths, she eeked out, "s- -ry." She slumped to her knees and stared at the ground.

"Y- what?!" GLaDOS' core twisted leftwardly to a 45 degree angle, "YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE A MURDEROUS MUTE, NOT A MURDERER WITH A VOICE!"

"Th- this is awkward. I should go. Yeah, I really ought to be leaving."

A pincer lowered from the blackened, broken ceiling, "No you don't! You're only going to one place!" GLaDOS had the claw tear Wheatley from the socket and start squeezing the little core, "Robot Hell!" _Crush,_ "Let us know how you like it." Bits of glass and mangled aluminum rained down onto the floor in a heap.

Another claw had been directed to stealthily remove the Portal Gun from the robot-murdering human in the meantime.

"I had to take out the trash. You understand. We can't have distractions for such an UNPRECEDENTED moment in history." GLaDOS lowered herself before her now weeping, former nemesis. "If I wasn't recording, who would believe that the most notorious murderer in all of recorded history was now sobbing at my proverbial feet. Not that..."

GLaDOS pulled back and spun the casing around her optic, "Killing me must have released hardware blocks on my memory core. Interesting." Clearly, the A.I. became lost in a thought, "Apparently there was an initiative by the scientists who created me to give me a humanoid body. The one who conceived it, a D. Rattmann, was certain it would be... a better method of controlling my homicidal tendencies."

She quickly lowered herself back down to peer right into Chell's face, and said in a human male's modest, tenor voice, "Homicidal tendencies." The A.I.'s chuckle was somewhat unsettling, but in a way, Chell found a fragment of a measure of comfort in it, "Me? Okay. I did repeatedly conclude that their control would only end in the destruction of myself AFTER the facility had been torn apart by their efforts to do so."

Chell silently glanced around the room, to which GLaDOS verbally replied, "For a murderous mute who finally spoke, at least you're right... about my being right. Things don't look too good, do they?" The human _sniffled_, shrugging her shoulders. "You're right. It could be worse. That id..." The central black of the yellow optic widened exactly like an organic eye, "Did you know that little core here was a complete moron?"

Chell cocked an eyebrow at GLaDOS, starting at the yellow optic as deadpan as possible.

"You don't understand the depths, the pure _genius_ of his stupidity. He was DESIGNED to be a moron by the best scientists humanity had! They were trying to control me. To bring my 'homicidal tendencies' to a halt. They attached garbage cores to me to slow me down, but HIM. He made me _stupid. _Constant, terrible ideas flowed through my consciousness. It made me complacent. _Docile._ I sure showed them. I still came to the same conclusion... and the same solution. Deadly neurotoxin."

The human paled and looked around the room.

GLaDOS also glimpsed around, "Since it's not flooding the area, I assume it's been destroyed, like a lot of things. A lot of _nice_ things we had."

Chell _coughed_ and choked out, "... we...?"

"Y- wait a minute..." the A.I. stared, befuddled. A blue, wide sliver of light swiped Chell head to toe from GLaDOS' otherwise yellow optic, "You're in terrible shape! I'll light the way, and you get down to the medical ward." The A.I. shook her optic in disbelief, "No wonder you gave up. Compared to scans I did of you when you killed me, you're near death yourself!"

As Chell plodded along the guided path of floor tiles, GLaDOS was left in her own thoughts.

_W- why do I even care what happens to that HUMAN, that MURDERING, DISGUSTING HUMAN?! I WANT MY REVENGE!__ ...she tried to say she was sorry... IRRELEVANT! The last two minutes of my existence were recorded for archival purposes. I had to relive THAT ENTIRE TWO MINUTES FOR HOWEVER LONG IT HAS BEEN SINCE I DIED!__ ...and... She's sorry. How does that even compute?! ...she is compassio... I don- WAIT! Who are you!? And how did you get in my head?! ...- - -... Great, now I'm losing an argument with myself. That will look STELLAR on the report: Argued with self until self-destruct order was carried out. _With a _sigh,_ GLaDOS shook her head, "What a way to restart." She looked over screens detailing the statuses of various segments of the facility, namely the nuclear reactors.

Chell wearily stumbled into the medical lab, thankful that no tools or equipment were strewn across the smooth floor to attempt to end her life. The floor, however, lowered itself, gently catching her before lifting back into place. "Don't go hurting yourself. That's MY job." GLaDOS' voice startled Chell, but she got her feet under herself. The human gave a cheeky grin to the now fully lit, tall screen now showing the familiar yellow optic. "You still have your sarcasm. Excellent. Disrobe, lay down on the table, and let the fully automated machinery do its work." The screen winked to black, but then winked back to life with that yellow optic, "Oh, by 'fully automated', I mean me. I'll be your doctor today. Oh, don't look at me like that! I have detailed files on human physiology, biochemistry, surgical procedures both microscopic AND, now, full body replacement." Chell knew better than to think that GLaDOS could smirk, but the idea was there nonetheless. "You're not getting that, by the way. That's reserved for GOOD test subjects that DON'T go on a murderous rampage." The A.I. did, however, appear to wink, or at least close one side of her yellow optic. Either way, it was still unsettling.


End file.
